


Torn apart

by Nedrika



Series: P4 Memes [8]
Category: Persona 4
Genre: Blood and Injury, Implied Seta Souji/Tatsumi Kanji, M/M, how does Dia work, temporary injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:21:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22072438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nedrika/pseuds/Nedrika
Summary: Dia might heal almost everything, but that doesn't mean that it's painless, and it doesn't mean there isn't cleaning up to do afterwards.
Relationships: Seta Souji/Tatsumi Kanji
Series: P4 Memes [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1409869
Comments: 3
Kudos: 56





	Torn apart

**Author's Note:**

> Misread a prompt about the Team's clothes getting torn up and this happened, and I ended up with two radically different bits.

Souji wasn't sure how they had made it before Kanji. 

The first time Souji took a proper hit in a fight had been a very revealing moment. Not only did it really fucking hurt, but he had watched the bones of his arm pull back into the ragged gaping hole in his skin and reknit into a solid mass in front of his own eyes. Blood vessels had twanged back into place as straight lines, and then the muscle began to weave fibres across the gap before it was covered over by the parchment of his skin, and he could feel it fill in underneath the nerves of it. He'd been hurt before, sure, but nothing like that. He pulled his sleeve quickly over it so that he could try and pretend it had never happened; it had been fine when it was the novelty of a bruise vanishing or a scratch closing over, but there were definite limits to what a human should see of their own body. That was over the line.

It had almost cost them their reputation in town when they had eventually figured out that while sure, healing magic could do wonders for the human body and there had certainly been times he had thought one of them was going to be dead for real right before they jumped back to their feet, there were very strict rules about what could be repaired with it. Flesh, blood, bones were all a sure-fire thing. Hair too, after that one time that Yukiko had missed with a fireball quite astonishingly badly and hit Yosuke square in the head. 

Clothing, however, most certainly did not come under the purview of Mediarama. The most brutal attacks healed over without a single scar within a few seconds, leaving only tattered rags in their wake.

They had seen some close calls, when their clothes had got a bit mangled and they’d had to skulk through Junes, even more shady looking than they had been before, but had somehow always made it out in the end. There had been a major moment of realisation the first time a claw had raked across Chie's back while they had been ambushed; when they had cast Dia on it the wound had closed up in no time, the blood had oozed back into her body and the tear through the leaf green of her jersey had... Stayed. Completely torn up. She had only panicked a little, worried about bra straps and explaining it to her parents, but Yosuke had snuck out to pull a jumper from the display in clothing, ring it up with his discount and ferry it back into the TV.

They had started bringing changes of clothes into the TV world shortly after that. It had been so much easier to tear up their battle clothing, dent the armour and batter all their sportswear generally, and then change into their school uniforms and march back out looking almost as though nothing at all had happened. There were a lot of new changes bought in those days, and it had been difficult to explain that no they’d just fallen off their bikes and got into a fight in school and taken a trip down the stairs but its fine really. Souji had only tried once to pass it off as a bad experience with a cat before the look on Dojima’s face told him that there was no way at all that it was going to fly and he had better come up with a better excuse by the morning. In the morning it had been a dog that had slipped a leash. Dojima let it slide but there was something to the tilt of his eyebrow that clearly said that there was to be none of that nonsense in the future.

They had all gotten tired of it quickly. Yosuke complained constantly about not being able to afford all these spares and all the discounts that were going through on his card was beginning to make his manager suspicious, and the last thing he needed was to be reported to his dad for taking advantage of his benefits. 

Chie had cursed a lot at the beginning, but had gotten used to the scrapes and had taken a stapler into the TV to get most of the stuff together; she was beginning to be more staple than girl, and pretty regularly kicked one into her shin which then needed tweezing out.

Yukiko had taken to wearing a lot of the Inn’s spare kimono and was sewing rough patches over the ones that had busted made from the old, really torn up ones and with stitching that normally gave after a light shove. She had confessed her guilt about it to Souji, and that she probably wasn’t going to take another after the five that she had taken wore through. They had come from the fixing pile originally, so it wasn’t that bad really, but it was. 

And then Kanji had appeared to save all their souls.

The first time he had got a good look at them in their rags he’d done a double take: they hardly looked like heroic souls coming to the rescue, more like they had fallen off a lorry and rolled several miles into a landfill; they itched and scraped and were generally miserable. The only thing that had survived to any degree were the few pieces of metal armour that they’d been able to find or buy, but everything else was an ugly collage of disparate pieces, but he’d effusively thanked them as if they didn’t look positively medieval.

He had admitted, quietly, in the depth of night into Souji’s shoulder, that he’d thought they were some sort of weird religious cult. It had been easy to laugh off in the dark and safe in their understanding, but at the time the idea of some very religious self-penance or masochism was the only way that Kanji could process it. There had probably not been an awful lot of solace in the sudden talk of shadows and personae like the demons and angels of old, but it had smoothed out pretty easily for the amount he'd had to take in over a very short period of time.

The first time Kanji saw healing magic it had not been himself that had been injured, but he'd seen the insides of Yukiko slither back into her insides and taken it remarkably well, other than turning a pale that could almost be green. The first time it had happened to himself he had been punched clear across the room without his leg, passed out from the pain and then woken up all back together.

Once they had snapped him back to reality and he’d looked over himself, pants off and flipped over his shoulder to keep them handy, he’d seemed happy with the result. And okay, maybe that was the first time Souji had appreciated the chance to take in the impressive musculature that had been salvaged.

He’d slid one foot back into its respective pant leg only to come straight out the other side, and they had started the long, sorry tale of why they all looked so worn down. They’d get him armour fitted soon enough and he'd get used to the discomfort of it.

Kanji had only squinted at them, said it was nothing to worry about. Then he tore the scrap of cloth off, tied it around his chair leg and sauntered back off into the strip club.

Well then.

The next day he was back with his pants intact, neatly seamed and looking more punk than ever. 

They started asking him for little fixes, which turned into big fixes. Sometimes they’d not have their change of clothes, or have burned through the spare as well, or they wanted to keep an effect too useful to give up. Eventually then it was about the savings of not having to get so many new outfits. They would leave their tatters with him and pick it up from him the next day, but sometimes they would need it to get out of Junes; then they would sit with him, sometimes several together, talking over the day’s lessons or the newest film release.

Souji could never concentrate on anything else when Kanji was sewing though. It was incredible that he should still be caught aback by the people he knew having sides of themselves that he didn't know at all, but there was a hypnotic quality to watching Kanji, still red and panting from a fight in which he had been screaming his lungs out while he swung a desk above his head, streaked with matter from his last opponent, sitting quietly concentrating on the cloth that ran through his clever fingers, pulling high and then darting down in sure, graceful movements.

He had taken early on to sitting quietly while he worked, asking only the bare minimum questions so as not to disturb him, only hoping to understand a little more of the intricate hemming or seaming stitches that he had a seemingly endless number of permutations for, thinking to the sad little scraps of cloth that he had practicing with at home. Just as Kanji hoped to help his ma, Souji hoped he could perhaps help with the aftermath of their scraps at some point. But for now, it was enough to watch him. 

There were times he got jealous of his own shirts for the attention, and those were the rare times when he purposefully inserted himself into the slow push-pull meditation of the repair work, asking Kanji if he could try and show him how to do it. He'd smile and push it over to him with an easy "sure, senpai," the honorific still not quite worn off, and he would brush his fingers over the small neat rows of stitches, trying to catch the pattern of thread before a warm body would press against him and those strong, smart hands pointing and pulling his own through complex weaves. It was an easy confidence, not like the brash air he had on the streets or the quiet swagger he had in their group; not even like the gossamer thin beginnings of a relationship that were starting to knot them together. 

It was quiet, and he was deft in his element, mending what before would have been just thrown away, all the work so perfect that a casual observer would never know it was there at all. In a secret world, using their other selves to fight against impossible foes, there was a symmetry there that would make him smile long after the repairs were done and he ran his thumb against a seam in his jacket; the remnants of a join that had burst in a similarly passionate but far less hateful manner than all the rest.

All he could be sure of was that his life had been worse in innumerable ways before they'd pulled Kanji from that bathhouse, and they were only going to get better from here.


End file.
